Garrett once again stressing importance of turnover ratio

Coach Jason Garrett didn’t have to feed a bunch of statistics into a computer during the bye week to figure out the biggest problem facing the floundering Dallas Cowboys.

All he had to do was turn on his television.

Garrett spent much of Sunday watching games around the league. His couch time reinforced his belief that he needed to once again stress to his team the correlation between winning and losing and turnover ratio.

“Taking care of the football and going to get the football, that’s line one in this game and has been for a long, long time,” Garrett said Monday in Irving. “You saw it all over the games this weekend, so we just have to do a better job of that.”

The Cowboys entered Week 5, which ended with Monday night’s game between Houston and the New York Jets, next to last in the NFL in turnover ratio at minus-7. Dallas suffered five turnovers – all via interceptions thrown by Tony Romo – in losing 34-18 to Chicago in their last game.

“On offense, ball security is a team thing,” Garrett said. “It starts with the guys up front, the guys protecting, the guys blocking, certainly the guys who have the ball in their hands. And similarly, on defense, if you create havoc for the quarterback and he has to do things quicker than he wants to do, typically those result in interceptions.

“Again, I watched the games over the weekend, those are the things that show up over and over again in this league.”

Three of the Cowboys’ next five opponents are on the plus side in turnover ratio, including NFC South-leading Atlanta, which at plus-10, a big reason why the Falcons are 5-0.

Up next for the Cowboys is a trip to the AFC North-leading Baltimore Ravens, who are 4-1 and sixth in the NFL and third in the AFC in turnover ratio at plus-6.

The Ravens are among the leaders in the NFL in takeaways with 12 (six interceptions, six fumble recoveries). Dallas is near the bottom with just four (one interception, three fumble recoveries).

“It’s a personal challenge each one of us has to accept,” cornerback Brandon Carr told reporters in Irving when asked about creating takeaways. “You have to put it upon yourself, within the scheme of our defense, to go out there and be the one to make that play, be the one that makes the difference for the defense.”

Carr said the good news is that the players returned from the bye refreshed and eager to get back to work.

“Guys have a sense of urgency,” he said. “We just erased the last four weeks out of our memory.”